[SPOILERS - PBEM17] novice and spaceman - Suryavarman of India

[spacemanmf]

Well that's part of the question, isn't it? If we settle on the gems we need to defend the city and the iron tile. So it will be easier for them to remove our iron if we settle on the gems, but we'll have a stronger city if we settle on the gems.

I guess I vote for settling on the iron since the settler's already there and we'll be more likely to regret settling on the gems.

OK, go for it then.

[novice]

Got it.

[spacemanmf]

Got it.

Btw, you can assume that you've always got it on PBEM17, unless you are away, or you want me to play the turn (or both). I'm not going to "steal" it if you're around. I don't have enough of a sense of your plans.

[spacemanmf]

Mmm, more profit (and beakers) from settling the iron site. Who needs foreign trade routes?

[novice]

Btw, you can assume that you've always got it on PBEM17, unless you are away, or you want me to play the turn (or both). I'm not going to "steal" it if you're around. I don't have enough of a sense of your plans.

Roger that.

So, we settled HostileTakeover on the iron. Financial result was a net zero this time as well. Whipped another settler in Pyramid Scheme, will probably send it west towards the tundra islands.

Civil Service and a Great Scientist due in 3 turns after ending turn. Also, Pyramid Scheme reached 250 culture and will steal the Gems from Thailand. And Confucianism autospread to Pyramid Scheme.

Pictures next turn.

[spacemanmf]

City count:

Darrell/Kyan - 15
Us - 12
Rego - 11
Shoot - 9

Shoot is down on city count but doing well on the demographics. Excluding Kyan, he is second on GNP (well behind our mighty GNP), top in MFG, close to top in crop yield.

[novice]

Chat with Regoarrar. He sounds like he could be up for cooperation, but we'd probably have to make it an alliance of sorts, not just open borders or whatever. I'm not sure I have the energy for that.

Other than that he did some fishing for info and I acquiesced. I don't think I gave away any state secrets anyway, nothing important that he couldn't find out for himself.

Oh and he wasn't too pleased about Farmer's Market but didn't seem to want to make a big deal out of it.

18:54 Dan: i'm open for suggestsions for city names
me: I figured you were naming them after lurkers who posted in your thread?
18:55 Dan: yes
18:56 me: guess you'll have to hold off on expansion until you gain more lurker interest
Dan: no doubt
i see you made a bold expansion last turn
me: how can egypt and netherlands afford 15 cities anyway?
Dan: how many do you have?
me: 12
18:57 Dan: how many do we have?
(i'm assuming you're tracking)
me: 10? 11?
not that bold really
18:58 Dan: well it's on shoot's arm, right?
me: yes, but Darrell is on ours
Dan: did he have "your" iron?
me: have you researched iron working?
Dan: yes
me: yes, he did
18:59 Dan: by luck?
me: dumb luck
Dan: he settled that pretty early - did he already have IW?
yeah that's what i thought
me: so I guess StM is the odd man out
Darrell has two sources though
Dan: unless he wants to settle darrell's iron ;-)
me: already settled, I think
19:00 Dan: ah
me: does our city placement make you nervous?
Dan: not particularly
me: ok, good
Dan: just seemed odd because it's on someone else's arm
seems like the middle is filling up fast
me: yeah
19:01 we were forced to settle there basically
Dan: whys that?
me: well, for the iron
Dan: ah
makes sense
me: with 15 cities apiece I don't think there's much land left to claim
19:02 Dan: i noticed you guys settled on the corn island between us that i had my eye on
me: yes well we tried negotiating for land earlier and it didn't work out
not with you, mind
19:03 Dan: darrell?
me: and StM, and Kyan
19:04 At the risk of bringing this conversation to a halt, what would it take for you to sign open borders again?
Dan: screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech
me: lol
Dan: eh i don't know
i'm not necessarily opposed to it
but i am not sure i can risk getting the wrath of the other 3 folks
19:05 should there be some wrath to get there
me: has this wrath been formalized and quantified?
Dan: no
this is all hypothetical wrath at this point
19:06 me: I don't think it would hurt you much to see us grow a little stronger
seeing how you're the farthest away from us and has done the least to aggravate us
19:07 so maybe there's a win-win here somewhere
Dan: i agree
i meant what i said back in like our first convo
i'm not opposed to working with you necessarily, even if you're "winning"
19:08 me: well that's good
19:10 Dan: so do you have moai yet?
me: half-built
Dan: ok
me: we interrupted it for our war effort
19:11 should be done shortly with another whip overflow
Dan: that's a nice power graph ya got there
me: heh
not that it helped us much
at least it forced Darrell and StM to divert resources
19:12 Dan: right
wow darrell has 411 gold
me: it was more a statement really than anything else
wow
how did that happen? Moai fail gold?
Dan: dunno
i haven't been paying attention to it
looks like he's making 90gpt
19:13 at least he has that much to trade
me: so he's making at least 90 gpt then
Dan: right
probably 90
i don't know why'd he be, say, researching at 10%
19:14 me: well I sometimes do that when finishing off a tech and starting to save gold for the next one
Dan: yeah that's true
me: Anyway everybody is developing nicely at the moment
Dan: so is there any food on the ice marble / whales islands?
me: Not that I've seen
19:15 Dan: blah
me: islands plural?
Dan: i've seen 2 of them
me: are you going to settle for that marble btw?
Dan: probably
depending on if there's food there
me: and have you seen more marble?
19:16 there's a tundra island northeast of the marble that has a clam for food
that's all the food I've seen in the tundra so far
Dan: hmm
19:17 so in any case i would be annoyed if you settled that marble site w/o discussing it first
just to be clear
me: btw, Darrell would have grabbed that corn island one turn later if we hadn't settled it first
Dan: yeah
you know how it goes though
me: clear regarding the marble
Dan: you see a site that you like
and you treat it as "yours"
even if it is closer to someone else
19:18 this map definitely has some good tension points
i likey
i think we do have to ban glh in future games though
me: well it depends on the setup
the GLH is kinda nerfed in PB4 for example
Dan: :-(
me:
Dan: i meant for water maps like this
19:19 i think you can get a lot of cool setups
but with glh it just makes it too crazy
it leads to hypothetically the glh builder getting dogpiled by everyone and their first great person getting killed
(hypothetically)
19:20 me: I thought that was the Pyramids
Dan: hmm maybe it was the combo
me: With a GLH ban there would be fewer options for leader picks though
19:21 so you're not into the RBmod then?
Dan: i'm waiting for rbmod to figure out what it's for
me: It teetered on the edge of neverending scope creep
Dan: right
that's what i'm sayin
me: but I think Krill actually managed to wrap it up nicely
Dan: that's the way it goes though
19:22 you fix one thing
that makes you have to balance another thing
etc
me: Still, looking at the end result it feels a bit like a variant and not a balance fix
19:23 and BtS is fairly balanced as it is
just ban the unfun stuff and you're good to go
19:25 Dan: toroidal maintenance is not fun
19:26 me: why not?
19:27 Dan: too high
19:28 me: so lower the difficulty? Or does that have drawbacks?
Dan: eh i don't know
i'm just whining i think
me: well our PBEM17 map is friggin small
19:29 so the distance maintenance is huge
messed up my first sandbox

[novice]

As promised, a T75 / 1AD turn report with lots of pictures.

First, our lands:









We whipped a settler in Pyramid Scheme last turn that is headed towards the western tundra island. We overflowed to a second settler that can go there as well, or it can settle the horse city on our mainland. We also have room for five other filler cities on our mainland, these will be worthwhile, at least when we switch to Mercantilism.

A runthrough of various advisor screens:

We're also lacking HBR and Meditation.





(Yes, we have 7 workers for 12 cities. We haven't needed more, we need more now though when we can start spreading irrigation.)

Graphs, looking pretty good because we don't have Kyan's graphs:

Finally, a runthrough of our 12 cities.

[spacemanmf]

Nice report. But no city plans? Or is it too fluid for long-term plans?

I see you've split the tundra island into two potential, average-looking city sites. Well, as long as they can pay for themselves. I guess once Tipping Point is fully irrigated it can grow without the clams, which can then be used for the southern island city.

[novice]

Here are my plans for the next few turns. I've queued some builds as well.











Let me know if you have any questions

Also, here's Investment after end of turn:



It has reached the requisite size for running six scientists, but can't do that until T78. So on T77 Capital can borrow some of the food and fill its food box almost full (it can't grow past size 11 until the forge completes. Actually, it can because we'll adopt Confucianism. So if Capital can borrow enough food to grow, that's even better.)